


Deep Roots Are Not Reached by the Frost

by vaire_the_weaver



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3529385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaire_the_weaver/pseuds/vaire_the_weaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the Avengers were descendants of characters from Lord of the Rings?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Estel's Star- Captain America

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a kinkmeme prompt way back and just rediscovered my notes. I would link to the prompt, but it's kind of difficult to find something from so long ago.
> 
> I always meant to continue this, but between grad school and loosing my notes, it got abandoned. I have notes for and will be writing through the whole Iron Man- Iron Man 2 arc. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

            Approaching the lab doors, Howard grimaced as he sipped the mug of not-coffee he’d swiped on from Private Williams upon his entry to the Brooklyn bunker. Damn seagulls- every morning he has to pass hordes of the noisy birds, and every morning he can’t get their cries out of his head, right when he needs to be strategizing his coffee acquisitions. He isn’t providing the labs with the preciously scarce grounds so that he can grab some private’s substitute brew every morning in a fit of distraction.

             As the lab doors swung shot behind him, Howard noticed Captain Rogers seated on the lab bench long before abandoned in the empty corner, hunched over like he was hoping no one would notice him and turning something over in his hands. Even with Erskine’s secret serum, Howard hadn’t expected his “vita-rays” to work unless he had the right sort of test subject. Using science to simulate the beams of the sun before she aged and lost her magic was more art and hope than Howard wanted to admit, and even if his calculations proved correct, he doubted it’d work unless the super soldier-to-be was sensitive to that sort of thing- had elvish blood somewhere in his ancestry, preferably not too diluted by time. Howard had truly given up hope when he’d seen the scrawny twig the Army wanted him to make into a super soldier; only stubbornness and his oath to see this through kept the experiment running. Yet the impossible had occurred, and after what Rogers pulled in France, Howard was inclined to think there was probably more to the man than he’d originally thought. Still, Rogers had the damndest ability to act like a shy and retiring housewife Stark had ever seen, all modest uncertainty right up until the captain’s made up his mind to do something insane just because it was the right thing. Howard cleared his throat.

          Rogers startled and nearly dropped whatever was he’d been fondling. Watching the man fumbling, Howard took pity on him.

           “Thought everyone knew to show up to any appointments with me a bit late.” It wasn’t that Howard couldn’t be on time, but between a hereditary predisposition (that, honestly, could be traced back through his family line till before the first dawn) to the idea that measuring time in minutes and hours or days and months and years is beneath him and to passionate single minded pursuit of invention, it didn’t usually seem worth the effort. Besides, if it was important people would always wait for him.

           “Oh,” Rogers was turning the most delicate shade of red Stark had never seen on a man’s cheek before. “I just, I didn’t have anywhere else to be, so I thought I’d come in here and wait til you needed me for the fitting, for the armor I mean. The lab was quiet.”

            Howard smirked. Usually, he found the quiet boring and tried to fill it, but he had to admit, “It does get tiresome listening to the entire Army talking about Captain America all time. And then I leave the bunker and, for a change, I get to listen to civilians talk about Captain America.”

           Howard’s smirk grew. Rogers’ blush had spread across his face to even the tips of his ears by now. He was staring at and nervously turning whatever it was he was holding in his hands, some sort of silver thing Howard observed as he walked towards the captain looking for a closer view. Brushing aside Rogers’ mumbling protests of modesty, Stark dropped down to the bench, sitting next to Rogers. He switched his cup of imposter coffee over to his left hand, and held out his right hand imperiously.

          “Let me see what’s so interesting you have to stare at it instead of me.” Rogers shut his mouth and gently handed the thing to Howard. A silver star, though it seemed oddly resilient for a piece of silver of its apparent age. An old, worn, but untarnished star with- were those Elvish runes on the back? Was that Quenya? Howard distinctly felt his heart take a running start and leap into his throat.

        Rogers started talking nervously again as Howard stared, incredulous. “It’s an old family heirloom, a talisman my mom used to call it. There’s all kinds of family stories about it; we’ve had it since the dawn of time seems like.”

         His words stumbled to a stop here, temporarily. Rogers shut his mouth and opened it again, shut it again. Finally he mumbled, “It’s supposed to protect people in battle, bring courage and clarity to make the right choices. I was hoping maybe…”

         “What, you have the chance to change your costume to something that doesn’t make you a big walking target, and you want to put a big shiny family heirloom on your chest? Next you’ll be saying you’ve got family stories about winged helmets, and you want to keep the awful things on your stupid bright blue excuse for head protection.” Rogers went silent, which, considering his voice had already faltered to a halt, was almost impressive. If the man had any part of his body left yet to blush, Howard would think about eating his hat. What, the hat was Italian.

       “You do want to keep the wings. There really is no accounting for taste.” Stark rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the star in his right hand. The runes were worn almost to nothingness, but that- did those form the words “House of Telcontar,” or was that just fanciful thinking? Shaking his head, Howard muttered in Quenya under his breath ,“The line of Luthien shall never fail.”

         “Sorry, sir. I only speak a little French.” Rogers found his tongue again. Howard waved his hand lazily at the misplaced apology.

         Rogers tried again, speaking with some more determination this time. “I’m not – fond, of the wings, but it feels right, with the rest of the whole weird costume. But about the star- I know it’s stupid, trusting a good luck charm and taking a valued heirloom into battle, but I wouldn’t feel right going to the front without it.”

        Howard handed him back the star, and drained his coffee without noticing the taste. Standing up, he clasped a hand to Steve’s shoulder.

        “Call me Howard. If you want to risk a heirloom in the fields of France, I’ll see to it that the star will remain a shining beacon to all enemy snipers. After all, the really stupid thing isn’t having a good luck charm, it’s not using it.”

        And while he was busy attaching a thousands year old priceless remnant of a lost age to a leather breastplate, maybe he ought to look into shield designs. Using all that vibranium the U.S. Army managed to scrounge into one shield to protect a costume wearing freak of science may not be a waste after all.


	2. The Doom of the Noldor- Iron Man arc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1/2 for the Iron Man arc. Some dialogue is taken directly from the movie.

He wakes to hands in his chest, reaching for his heart. Everything after that is too blurred with pain and terror to remember, but the weird thing is that in the cave and through all the torture, Tony’s nightmares aren’t about the torture- they’re the stories of his childhood come true.

He dreams that he’s Finrod Felagund in the dark of a dungeon cell being eaten alive by wolves- they probably went for his throat first, but Tony’s dreams have the beasts biting into his chest and delving for his heart. He can feel his ribs breaking and being torn away, his lifesblood seeping out. He dreams of barrowwights reaching with skeletal hands through flesh and bone to pluck the heart out of his chest. He dreams he’s Feanor, his spirit burning out of his ravaged body, leaving only ashes and a doomed quest behind as his legacy. Fire and pain, anguish and ashes haunt his fevered dreams.

Then Raza takes Tony on the super special tour of his little terrorist camp, showing off his stockpile of Stark weaponry. That night Tony dreams of ships sailing away from a burning harbor, wailing cries of mothers and children feeling grief for the first time, and of a dark figure high on a mountain watching the ships sail away. Then he continues on to memories of weapons with his name on them buried in the remains of American vehicles and of American soldiers. When he wakes up, shaking more from the horror than from the cold of the cave, Tony takes his blanket and huddles close to the fire. It’s then that his strangely prim translator decides to give him a motivational speech.

“What you just saw there, that is your legacy, Stark, your life’s work in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark, or are you going to do something about it?”

“They’re going to kill me.”

“Then this is a very important week for you, isn’t it?”

That doesn’t actually help. All Tony can think about is the family curse and the words of his great grandfather: “I say we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do will be the matter of songs until the last days of Arda.” He can’t help but think that it probably would have been a good thing if Feanor had just called it quits at the point, turned tail and went home, but he also now has an intimate understanding of this defiance in the face of certain destruction. 

The first order of business is to create a new heart for himself.

When he first realizes he’s been waking up reciting the Doom of the Noldor in its original Quenya, he asks his cellmate how many languages he speaks. The man doesn’t talk about Tony’s dreams. He responds with documentary-style commentary on the many languages of terrorists as seen in this observed instance of a terrorist camp. That’s alright. Tony’s not the only one with coping mechanisms, and he has to be grateful that his fellow captive isn’t asking about the dreams as they work on Tony’s brilliant, only extremely improbable (for a Stark at least) escape plan. Besides, the information will probably come in handy at some point. It’s then that Tony figures it’s a good time to ask for the man’s name. Maybe he’ll ask about Yinsen’s history- his life before this hole in the ground- sometime soon.

When he does ask, Tony has to smile a little at the way Yinsen turns the question on him. Stark offers his usual deflection. Besides it being a bad idea to mention his extended family, relations he hasn’t spoken to since before his dad died don’t really count the way Yinsen’s wife and children do, after all. Still, he’s been thinking about his relatives since this started, thinking in a way he hasn’t since he was a child hearing the tales and unbelievable history for the first time. His smirk threatens to go sideways when Yinsen, despite his ignorance of Tony’s family, accurately sums up his situation in a single sound byte: “You’re a man who has everything, and who has nothing.”

 

It’s Yinsen’s words, Yinsen’s words and the long ago words of some dark figure standing on a mountain watching ships sail away from a burning harbor, that Tony’s thinking of on the plane ride home, as he tells Pepper to call for a press conference, as he announces, “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. I have become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability” - announces that he’s shutting down the weapons manufacturing of Stark International. He’s not a praying man, but he’s praying now that this time, this time his efforts to do something good won’t turn to ashes in his hands, like all the best works of his fathers before him have done, like his own best work so far has done.


End file.
